The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Not infrequently someone here will ask for advice on improving their social skills, and I guess this week it's my turn.
My question: can anyone offer testimonials of having significantly altered their personality through conscious effort? I've become increasingly skeptical that certain kinds of change are possible.
I am 30, socially retarded, and have tried much of the usual advice, including
joining hobby groups (sports, dance, music, improv, rationalists, board games) - never made any lasting friends
improving fitness / grooming / appearance - this is in progress and I expect I'll continue to work on this
talking to strangers - doesn't go well (nor particularly poorly, just awkwardly)
My concern is that hanging out with people who are not very close friends is 1) difficult, in that I suck at establishing rapport, thinking of things to say, responding with appropriate emotion, 2) extremely tiring, and therefore 3) just unpleasant. This is true even if the people are super nerdy and share the same interests as me. One has to keep track of the words, body language, and emotional states of both oneself and one's interlocutor, and that is too much for my brain to handle. Literally there will be moments when I realize I should probably stop staring at the floor and make some normal brief eye contact, and in the second it takes me to adjust, I will lose track of the other person's sentence, and therefore be unable to respond appropriately.
Roughly from 2016 to 2019, I aggressively (by my standards) sought out chances to practice socializing and attended more meetups / hobby groups than I wanted to. Looking back, I don't think my social skills improved much, and socializing didn't ever get more fun or bearable. I did, however, get better at noticing the social skills I lack. Some things I've learned are
the chasm between how normal extroverts experience life and how I do is even wider than I thought
the facility and graceful precision with which sociable people can smooth over a bad joke, off-color statement, or awkward silence is incredible
the returns to social skills in every aspect of life - friends, dating, career, learning, general wellbeing - are much greater than I realized
I am now trying to decide whether I should redouble my efforts in this area (which is tiring and demoralizing) or essentially give up, and just live my life in the way that is natural to me: avoid talking to people whenever possible, one or two close friends excepted, never leave home except for work and necessary errands, and accept that I'll miss out on the benefits of human connection.
Other facts about me:
My coworkers are brilliant, most clearly smarter than me. In general this makes small talk more difficult since the bar for a comment being passably interesting is higher.
I am temperamentally boring and don't really enjoy most activities people find fun, especially if they involve leaving the house. Books and movies are good enough for me.
I started taking Vyvanse recently, which probably doesn't help here. But my social problems predate Vyvanse.
I have no good advice for getting to where you want, since I'm on the same journey. I would make a point about beginning or not though.
I guess what I'd ask you is to seriously - seriously - consider how tolerable you find your current life. Is this desire to improve just because you think it's something you should do or you legitimately feel some social deficit?
Cause, having been here, it was easy to write off improvement because I was "naturally" introverted (not really true: I was more extroverted when I was younger before certain events caused anxiety that made social interaction legitimately painful).
If you're anything like most people and do seriously miss those benefits indulging this line of thinking will do nothing but cost you more time. If you're prone to FOMO or the fact that you're aging past the acceptability of being a hermit/weirdo then it'll make the psychological burden you have to carry and the hill you have to climb even larger.
The desire for the benefits will never go away and you risk sinking into some purgatory or trying to redo all of this...except at 35.
I feel you. An annoying thing about the West is the icebreakers like "what makes you special" (which would seem dangerously narcissistic back home) or "what are your hobbies". I don't really consider "reading" (my main activity) a hobby which makes things more awkward for me.
It happened just yesterday at a work thing. I think I did a good job of brushing it off with humor but social retard so...
Recently I've been saying "I'm looking for a new hobby in the city, what's something I should try?" It's still awkward and fake though. I wonder if it might be necessary to develop a normal "hobby", or at least learn enough to talk about it casually, just to make these moments go more smoothly.
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